Pattern Rerelease: Bendixen Cowl

I'm sure this is true for many people, but I find I tend to go through phases in my knitter where I fixate on a particular technique or a particular item and make that sort of thing over and over again. In the past year or so, that has happened to me with tube cowls -- you know, those cowls that you knit as a big tube and then finish by grafting the ends together? They're lots of fun to knit, and it seems they've become a new thing for me in my designing, as I published three such cowl patterns last year alone.

My Bendixen Cowl was originally published late last year in Knit Now magazine. While I've had some good experiences working with this particular publisher, the downside is that the magazine is primarily available in the UK, so that meant that a lot of knitters (me included!) didn't have access to it. But the magazine is also wonderful in that its exclusivity period is relatively short, and I've now made it available in my Ravelry store.

Like the two tube cowl patterns I published previously, Bendixen starts with a provisional cast on -- any provisional cast on you like! You knit a bunch of stripes, then a super-easy stranded colorwork section, then some more stripes, and then finally you undo your provisional cast on and place the live stitches on a spare needle to graft the stitches on both ends of the tube together. You can carry the unused color up the inside for the stripes and make your floats as messy as you want in the colorwork section because no one will ever see the inside of this cowl! If you do your grafting neatly (and trust me, this pattern will give you a great excuse to practice your grafting and adjust your tension), it's nearly impossible to tell where the graft even is.

I worked this sample up in Debbie Bliss Rialto DK, a super squishy superwash merino with a cabled construction that provides excellent stitch definition. I used two skeins each in Ecru and Teal; you'll need about 230 yards of each color. Should you want to use a different weight of yarn or adjust the length or width of the cowl, it's very easy to adapt the pattern -- simply change the number of stripes or adjust the stitch count by a multiple of four. It's a quick knit (it only took me about a week), so if you need a last-minute Mother's Day present, it's a good option.

I may have gotten this tube cowl fixation out of my system for now -- but never say never!